Thurman#1

"They should just give Cook a decent offer ..." What makes you think they didn't? Is any deal Cook refuses therefore to be considered not fair? Is only a total cave to the player's demands fair? That's not the way a team should think or operate. And yeah, I do remember all the mediocre backs since Thurman we've trotted out with no playoff appearances. Devin Singletary, for instance. Zack Moss. Oh, wait.

Love it!!!

I hear you, but I think it's a lot more subtle and multi-faceted than just too many soft zones. It's also that we used to be really unpredictable, as Poyer and Hyde could wait till post-snap to go to deceptive switches and coverage changes. The new safeties just aren't that cagey and deceptive yet, and they aren't used to each other as much. Power and Hyde would show zone and switch post-snap even waiting another beat before pulling the moves. Then they'd do the opposite. Then they'd fake switches and cover straight. Our safeties had never started together before last year. And in their first year together in Buffalo, Poyer and Hyde were very good. But just not close to as good as they became after working together for awhile. We were running mostly zone Ds with Poyer and Hyde too. Just doing it a lot better, smarter, less predictably and more deceptively. Not to mention that after Benford, our CBs just weren't as good as they used to be. Douglas looked older suddenly and nobody else was any better.

I mean, yeah, they have a ton to prove. But knowing the future is impossible, though predicting or guessing right is not. To me it's with the reasonably possible set of outcomes. A bit on the high side, but not irrational or illogical at all. Just looked at Cover1's looks at why the defense had problems on third downs. They largely said the pressure was genuinely good, but the balls came out quickly and the defensive backfield wasn't fooling anybody the way they had in years before with Power and Hyde, so teams were completing the quick routes and converting the longer third downs. They had a lot of quick pressure on 3rd downs, but turning them into sacks, not so good, largely because even when the pressure was quick, the ball was out before they got there. They were 11th overall in quick pressures (2.5 seconds or less), 9th in quick pressure rate, and had the 7th fastest time to pressure rate in the league. (from the Cover 1 video below).

Hunh? Mahomes won MVP in 2022. From what I remember his team did alright the next year.

Before he met her he was doing an interview about whisky connoisseurship on Bussin' with the Boys. Now he's taking therapeutic red-light saunas with the wife every night. She is also in a career where keeping in terrific shape is a crucial part of her work. I think it's not that Josh got married, but that he got married to the right girl. Everything he's said about preparing for the season this year has been absolutely right on point. That was not true two years ago. I think this marriage is a very good thing for Josh, and because of that, for us. He got married two or three years before he got to Buffalo.

Yup. Plus once you guarantee it all for 2nd rounders, guess who starts not signing next?

Absolutely love to see this. You go, Josh!!!!

Kick the tires? Yeah, fair enough. Can't see how it would work out with the cap and his age and with a new contract being a problem. But I love McLaurin, great player, great attitude. Getting older, but a good guy.

Nice post, Roscoe. You say it gets harder on the borderline elite players. I'd say also that it's even harder yet on guys at positions that are not high-impact positions, which includes RB. If Cook were as effective as he is at, say DE, I think the Bills would value him highly enough that they'd be in Cook's neighborhood on value and would find a way to sign him. Sauce is at a high impact position and that adds to his leverage a great deal.

Oh, jeez, glad to hear that part. My heart was in my throat. The Cole Bishop comparison isn't a great one, IMO. Safety has to essentially run the backfield and know what's going on everywhere. DEs still have a ton to learn but not on the level that a safety does. Still would suck if he has to miss much time.

Glad I'm not a Bengals fan. Ownership is such crap there.

I don't know about never, but yeah, it's a bit ass-backwards. Yet, if you've got a really good receiver, but not a QB, shouldn't you do your best to keep the receiver in hopes you get a good QB one of these years? They're in a really tough situation. Thank heavens for Josh.

Just wanted to point out Coleman's pattern of usage last year. As far as targets, in the first three games he had a total of seven. That's not unexpected, to start slow as a rookie. Then, after they got more comfortable with him, they were using him quite a bit, 29 targets in six games. Then the injury, out for four games, no targets, obviously. Then the last four games of the year, when he got 21 targets, almost half, ten, in the final game of the regular season. To me, that shows four different periods of the season. And in the second period, when he had a bit of experience but was uninjured, I think they were using him the way they would like to. Here is a more complete breakdown: First three weeks (inexperienced): 106 snaps (62%), 7 targets, 5 catches, 71% catch percentage Weeks 4 - 9 (hitting his stride): 281 snaps (73%), 29 targets, 17 catches, 59% catch percentage Weeks 10 - 14 (including the bye): Out, no stats Weeks 15 - 18 (coming back from injury): 211 snaps (80%), specifically 63%, 66%, 90% and 97% in the four games respectively, 21 targets, specifically 2, 2, 7 and 10 in the four games respectively and 7 catches, specifically 1, 1, 3 and 2 respectively, a catch percentage of 33%. So it wasn't just missing games that resulted in the low targets and low catches. Early they weren't giving him many targets. After he came back from injury, he wasn't getting anywhere near the same catch percentage. Let's assume that they were using him the way they wanted to in weeks 4 - 9, and that healthy and with a few games of experience behind him he'd reached about his best catch percentage and could have maintained that. That's not anything you could take for granted but not unreasonable assumptions either. So if you assume those same rates over the whole season, he'd have had 73% of snaps, 70 targets and 41 catches, as well as 830 yards and 4.9 TDs. Assuming Keon has 41 catches next year, I think the two of them likely hit the over.

Yeah, I'm with this. It's a big if, but if they stay healthy, over.

It's indeed totally fine, but he's absolutely running full speed. You don't have a deep post called, notice that nobody's deep on the side you're running towards and nobody's going deep with you and think, "I'd better run slowly on this, let 'em have time to close on me, make the throw harder for Josh." He didn't misread the throw. He had a hard time going from a full sprint to adjusting to a throw in the most awkward possible direction for him. He had to get his feet not just ahead of him but also further towards the end zone so he could leap back towards the center of the field and the line of scrimmage at the same time. This forced him to run his legs ahead of his body, making a strange little curving path, but it was the fastest way he could adjust. There wasn't a way to do that quickly.

The instant Josh throws the ball, Kincaid has to jam on the brakes, turn around and dive backwards. He's running a deep post and the ball is thrown behind him and closer to the LOS, so he has to make a complicated adjustment, getting his feet further down the field and towards the sidelines than his body weight so he can drive and jump back towards the ball. That's always going to take time for a guy whose job on the play is to be running as fast as he can. You can see him speed up his feet and swing to the left while trying to slow his upper body down. It's an extremely awkward situation, more so for a guy with bad knees. No way he's settling under it, not in that situation. And he doesn't run anywhere near 15 - 20 yards. Maybe 12 or so? Maybe. He's in a horrible situation because his legs are behind him as he sprints and he has to get them in front of him and upfield to dive back towards the ball. Go look at the All-22. You don't have to guess as you do on the broadcast footage. You can see every step. You're right that it was not a laser throw, not at all, but he didn't have an extra instant to work with. There was no way to settle under it. He sees it, knows he will have to go from running full speed to going backwards and back downfield. It takes him several steps to do that, as it would anyone. If Josh had either thrown better under duress or had maybe two-tenths of a second more to gather himself, that's a TD running away.

No, not at all. The problem is that the throw from Josh was way the hell behind Kincaid. He had to actually stop, turn 180 degrees and go back for it, and he still had to dive for it. It was a hard play. One he should have made, but a hard play and a damn tough one for a guy on two bad knees.

You did state your position. On something completely different from what I had called you out on. You moved the goal posts. You challenged someone to post good catches by Kincaid, and Doc Brown did precisely that. And you said they weren't good, that they were average. It was a ridiculous contention, and I called you out on it. You replied specifically to that post of mine, and yet didn't say a single word about those four highlights Doc posted. You instead changed the subject, precisely as you showed in big letters above. If you have a problem that has nothing whatsoever to do with my post, that's fine. Unless you do it in a reply to my post. Which is exactly what you did. You replied to me, moved the goal posts and totally changed the subject, addressing not a single thing from my post. Again, feel free to bring up other points. But not when replying to a post about something completely different. When you do that, people will accuse you of moving the goal posts. Reason being, that's exactly what you're doing, moving the goal posts. As for the screen shot photo, yeah, you haven't seen it before because as I said, I screen-shotted it myself. From the All-22 film. You can very easily get the angle in a live sequence by looking at the All-22. It's right there on NFL Plus, as we speak. I just accessed it and copied the screen shot about, what? 45 minutes ago, probably. I'm sorry it's such crappy resolution. I usually watch in full-screen. Then I screen-shotted about half the field and tried to post it and TBD sends me a message saying it's too much data and it won't accept it. I cut the borders down and try again, same problem. I keep cutting it down, but reach a point where if I cut any more you can't tell what's going on. So then I make the window smaller and smaller. Usually somewhere around the point where the window is 2 x 3 inches and I'm still showing the minimum I can to show what's happening, the data gets small enough and TBD accepts it. I promise that's the correct play, and I promise I did my best not to frame the story to twist the narrative. This is a good attempt to show what the situation actually was. Nobody else on the field was going to get a chance to be involved in that play if Josh puts that ball out in front of Kincaid.

Is anyone arguing that that was not a drop? Are you arguing that there are any WRs who have never had a drop? Sorry, that's a dumb argument. Yeah, most TEs would have caught that probably 70% of the time. So would Kincaid. He didn't. No way around that, but it was a tough play, one that he usually makes, but did not that time. But your argument about what happened on that play is a bit nuts. He was not running towards any Chiefs. Just the opposite. If Josh had thrown directly ahead of him on the route he was running at that time, that was an easy TD. Easy. There would have been nobody with 5 yards of him or anywhere upfield of him. Instead, Josh, under duress but capable of terrific throws under duress, threw it way behind him, making it a difficult catch. Here's a screenshot of that play from the All-22 just as Josh let it go: There is nobody, and I mean absolutely NOBODY where Kincaid is running. The idea that he's running towards two Chiefs is completely and absolutely ridiculous. Josh throws that ahead of Kincaid and it is without question a TD. But I do understand why you changed the subject. You argued that those four catches weren't very fine catches. And they clearly were. No wonder you didn't comment, but instead moved the goalposts.

Nonsense. Those aren't ordinary catches. They're damn good. Incredibly spectacular? No. But damn good catches, for TEs or anyone else. You're right about going down easily more often last year. But you don't see that when you go back and look at his rookie year. When healthy he was bouncing off guys and running through arm tackles, and doing it an awful lot.

He absolutely has been good, damn good. But then not so good. He's been up and down. His first year he was really good. Second year up and down, and more down. But it's just not so that he's never been good.

I see. So nobody's saying it's collusion except a reporter with no access whatsoever. So, you figure that the fact that some guy with a column somewhere used the word, that it may well be collusion despite the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence, zero. Again, your own definition specifically mentions "agreement." And not only is there no proof whatsoever of agreement, or cooperation or conspiracy. Nobody has even mentioned the possibility, except I guess you. Having one guy tell a group of guys they should not overpay is not collusion. Nor is it even close. Sorry, man, you're a great poster, but this idea is just dumb. Saying it's collusion when nobody is even mentioning an agreement, on the basis of them listening to a lecture, just dumb.

Yeah, that's what collusion means. And again, the word has NOT been used in the witness statements. In other words, only the reporter is using it. The witnesses are not. Meaning the people who actually saw what happened are NOT accusing the owners of secret or illegal conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others. (Thanks for the definition of the thing they are NOT being accused of by the people who were there.) What is actually described by the witnesses is only a guy with some authority urging business owners to keep prices down. NOT secret agreement or cooperation to do so. Pointing out what's in everyone's best interest is not collusion. To further use your definition there, the witnesses are NOT accusing the NFL of having a "secret agreement to fix prices." Where's the agreement there?

It's not that wealthy people do that. It's that some wealthy people do that. There are also plenty of wealthy people who genuinely lose it all.